clairvoyance

“To
the present day, no one has come up with a persuasive
experimental design that can unambiguously distinguish between
telepathy and clairvoyance....Based on the experimental
evidence, it is by no means clear that pure telepathy exists per
se, nor is it certain that real-time clairvoyance exists." The
evidence "can all be accommodated by various forms of
precognition."--Dean Radin

Clairvoyance is an alleged psychic ability to see things
beyond the range of the power of natural vision or vision assisted by
technology. Clairvoyance is often associated with precognition
(psychically knowing something will happen) or retrocognition
(psychically "seeing" something that has already happened).
Psychically seeing things at a distance is sometimes called
remote viewing.

Since there is no
way to distinguish direct communication with another mind from communication
with a present or past perception by that or some other mind, there is no way to distinguish
clairvoyance from telepathy or
retrocognition. Since there is no way to distinguish direct
communication with another mind from communication with a future
perception by that mind, there is no way to distinguish telepathy or
clairvoyance from precognition. There is no way to
distinguish telepathy, clairvoyance, retrocognition, or
precognition from a mind perceiving directly the
akashic record. There is
no way to distinguish telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, or perceiving
the akashic record from perceiving what is directly placed in the mind by
Abraham's god (occasionalism).
There is no way to distinguish telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition,
retrocognition,
perceiving the akashic record, or having perceptions directly implanted in
our minds by Abraham's god from perceiving the hidden record of all perceptions in the
eleventh dimension that is vibrating in the intersection between the tenth
and twelfth dimensions. I could go on, but it would be too annoying.

People can have
visions or relate stream of consciousness perceptions or feelings that can
be interpreted as descriptions of places or things out of the range of
vision. The fact that such visions can be
subjectively validated as "accurate"
does not imply that any clairvoyance has occurred. If a person could provide
accurate and detailed descriptions of remote events on a regular
basis, that person would be celebrated as truly clairvoyant. That no such
person has ever existed in recorded history is a sign that stories of people
with second sight are mythical exaggerations.

Anyone can throw out
strings of words or sentences or draw pictures that other people can find
meaningful and apparently clairvoyant. This fact, however, is irrelevant to
establishing that clairvoyance is real. Subjective validation and
selective thinking,
acting in concert with wishful thinking,
ignorance of cognitive biases, and occasional fraud can account for the
widespread belief in the reality of clairvoyance. (Depending on which poll
one cites, between 25% and 40% of us believe that clairvoyance is real.)

Attempts by
scientists to establish the reality of clairvoyance have been going on since
the middle of the 19th century. So far, the overwhelming bulk of the
evidence indicates that clairvoyance does not exist. (For a short history of
the attempt to establish by scientific means the reality of clairvoyance and
other psychic abilities, click
here. See also the
entry on the ganzfeld experiments.)